Archive for December, 2009
2009 Edublog Awards
December 9th, 2009 | 
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The Edublog awards celebrate edubloggers, twitterers, podcasters, video makers, online communities, wiki hosts and other web based users of educational technology.
They are voted on by and for the community.
My nominations are limited because I find I’m reading fewer and fewer blogs. If I can subscribe via email, blogs get my attention. If not, I might glance at my rss feeds in iGoogle, chances are not so much any more. Am going to put the subscribe via email option on my blog ASAP.
My nominations are:
Best individual tweeter – Middle Class Girl - http://twitter.com/middleclassgirl Funny, informative, warm-hearted, unashamedly herself and never, ever boring.
Best group blog - The people I follow on Twitter – http://twitter.com/kerryank/following my first stop for resources, support, conversation and news.
Best resource sharing blog: Stephen Downes OL Daily http://www.downes.ca/ He sends it out via email and it’s part of my daily ritual.
Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion I’ve had so many this year I can’t pick. Okay, if I had to it would be #edayz09
Best educational tech support blog: Three Green Eggs - three cheers for an interactive script creator for virtual worlds to help those of us who aren’t programmers – http://www.3greeneggs.com/autoscript/
Best educational use of video / visual: Torley Linden is my video tut hero – an educator to tens of thousands whose style and delivery are unique and effective – http://torley.com
Best educational wiki: Second Life Wiki http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Main_Page Linden Labs has riled me quite a lot this year with stupid, community-destroying policies but this wiki, built by the SL community and insiders is a support and information resource I constantly tap into.
Best educational use of a social networking service: Allison Miller aka @theother66 She rocks Twitter and Facebook for education! http://twitter.com/theother66
Best educational use of a virtual world: Kyle Gomboy for Reaction Grid. Setting up Open Sim on a grid then keeping out the porn and violence so educators can thrive. Go Kyle, Chris, Felix and team! http://reactiongrid.com/
Lifetime achievement: Joanna McKay – for her work in Second Life and other virtual spaces, her graciousness in the face of adversity, her generosity in donating time and space to educators with ideas – http://jokay.com.au
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e-Sofa for Education.au Estate
In creating assets for Education.au’s virtual world activities, copyright is always front of mind for me. Over the years, any virtual world texture that has been released with open permissions has been recycled and re-used so often that it’s almost impossible to know where it originated and who owns the copyright. Are patterns in rugs or carpets copyright? What about plaids? (Burberry seems to think so.) I know material patterns can be, so taking a photo of the material that makes up your favourite outfit and using that as a texture for a virtual world could be a copyright or IP violation.
So I created a texture for a signature sofa for Education.au using the unique “E” in our logo described as “a unique, hand-drawn signature”. I used our corporate colours (as close to them as I could get using Open Sim), an open script for the sit animation and the result is pictured here.
